Crysis 3 Probably Won't Let You Toss Turtles At Bad Guys

Crytek focuses on creating an urban rainforest, and a compromise between Crysis' lovingly bizarre freedom and Crysis 2's guided combat.

Besides looking beautiful, the original Crysis stood out for including an absolutely
lovely and bizarre gameplay feature involving the local fauna at the
fictional Lingshan Islands: You could use them as weapons.
As part of the sandbox-driven design of the early parts of Crysis'
campaign, the player could pick up and throw practically anything --
crates, corpses, and even wildlife -- and chuck them with lethal
force. A thrifty player could, theoretically, sneak around and sling
crabs instead of bullets.

As visually impressive as Crysis 3 looks so far, with its swampy
streets of Chinatown and verdant takeovers of skyscrapers, it's the
presence of ambient wildlife that brings this little feature to mind.
During a hands-off demo, director of creative development Rasmus
Hojengaard points out that frogs now hop about in New York's newest
plumbing development, but the player doesn't do anything besides look
at them. When I had a brief chance to ask about whether Prophet (a
recurring character throughout the franchise, and now the protagonist
due to events in both the ending of Crysis 2 and whatever has happened in the 20-plus years between Crysis 2's 2023 time frame and Crysis 3's setting of 2047 New York) can use frogs with lethal force, Hojengaard became a bit more evasive.

He answered, "We want to give the sensation of a
living and breathing environment, but we don't want to arbitrarily
have you pick up a turtle and throw it at someone as a gameplay
mechanic, unless we can execute it more elegantly." Later on, he
added, "We don't want stuff like being able to throw frogs just for
the heck of it, as that's too much development time," and that causes me
some concern. I'm hoping he changes his mind.

Besides that one shortcoming, Crysis 3 looks pretty damn spiffy, as expected of a Crysis title. I personally am not too excited by the return New
York, but Hojengaard justifies the location by stating
that the city's visual transformation to a literal urban jungle
wouldn't have been as apparent in another locale; whether you've
played Crysis 2 or not, you should still feel shock and surprise by
the contrast in "typical" New York seen in most shooters, and Crysis
3's rendition. The developers justify the setting with a device called the
"Nanodome," which seems like something you get when the developers watch
Pauly Shore's Bio-Dome and Will Smith's I Am Legend
in the same night. The Nanodome has been placed over New York
by CELL (the corrupt human faction in the Crysis series) in an effort
to both contain and cleanse the threat/presence of the alien Ceph. The
Nanodome effectively hyper-accelerates plant growth to the point that
NYC turns into what Hojengaard refers to as the "urban rainforest,"
but he also notes that said urban rainforest has been divided into
seven basic zones for visual diversity. These range from grasslands to
canyons to the demo's depiction of a swamp-covered Chinatown.

Actual gameplay details were a bit scarce in this teasing first look.
The overall vision for the game lay somewhere between Crysis' sandbox spirit of placing gamers in a large swath of land full of tools, foes, and simple objectives, and Crysis 2's approach of offering a smaller and more focused area ("And look, we've helpfully marked "snipe here" and "sneak here" points for you!") experience. Hojengaard says that the team "wants to broaden the
sandbox gameplay, but there are also certain times in a game experience
where it's nice to have a situation that's a little more controlled
and guided -- because you want the player to experience a certain
visual event." He notes that the Chinatown swamp demo plays out more
focused and condensed, but promises that Crysis 3 also includes larger areas that
play out like a full, open sandbox. To that end, I noticed that the
Tactical View, while still letting you scan enemies, doesn't display
"vantage point here"-style highlights in your view.

Comments (7)

@ Thierry

I seems like you haven't played Crysis 2 because you thought it was too focused. Do not, under any circumstances, let that fantastic game pass you by because you think it is too linear. It isn't. Not at all. Crysis 2 is my favorite shooter of all time, and like I have been saying for a while, I've been gaming for 24 years and have played just about every shooter known to man. Crysis 2 is not a linear game. That's what I love about it.

Granted it is not open like the original Crysis, but they give you freedom in many ways. Firstly, the battlefields are larger than most other games. It isn't Call of Duty linear, not even close. You have plenty of room to experiment and explore. However, what's best about the game is that they reward your exploration. You will always find awesome weapons and secrets while exploring.

The game is also more open than other shooters because they give you so many options for how to play the game. Want to go in guns blazing? Go for it. Want to find a building to climb and snipe everyone? Go for it. Want to jump into a vehicle, ride through the front door and use the turret to lay waste to everything in sight? Go for it. What to use your cloak, sneak by everyone and only kill when you have to? Go for it. The game can be played in completely different ways and feels completely different each time.

I've played it more than 4 times now, and each time the game felt completely different. I beat it on the hardest difficulty, and never had to fire a single shot (except for one or two parts where they force you to). The game gives you the freedom to play the entire 10 hour campaign without firing a shot. How many shooters can you think of that let you do that?

That's why Crysis 2 is so fantastic. It may be more linear than Crysis 1, but it is nowhere near as linear as 99% of the shooters that come out today. Please please please play it. You'll be glad you did. It's super cheap nowadays anyway.

For now...

Crysis 3 just looks like a Crysis 2 expansion pack. Not much looks to be changed besides the location and a few new high-tech gadgetry thrown in. Hopefully this will change as development continues. I'm a pretty big fan of Crysis 1 and 2, although I'd have to admit I wouldn't want to play a totally linear Crysis 2 again. The sandbox "open world" style that the first game pulled off is really what made me coming back for more (other than the graphics).

Sad

Crysis

Crysis was a good game and all, but the only reason I got it was because of the graphics, and to be honest that's the most important thing for Crysis 3 I think. The minor details of the game don't really matter to me as long as it's a decent game that looks fantastic, oh and that must be sold on STEAM not stupid Origin which I refuse to touch.